It may be a Trump line, but 'crooked Hillary' is a real issue for many US voters

Washington: Given how the figs and ferns walk off the shelves at Home Depot, it's a safe bet that had Republicans named a potted plant as a candidate, they'd be better placed in this presidential race – because, transfixed as they are by the cringeworthy chaos of the Trump campaign, Americans are set to give an easy pass to a person they find equally distasteful.

That would be Hillary Clinton, who is seen by great swathes of America to be ethically challenged.

When pollsters at Quinnipiac University asked voters for the first word that came to mind on hearing Clinton's name, the most common response was "liar". Next came "dishonest" and "untrustworthy", before a few more respectful or endearing terms - "experience", "strong", "Bill" and "woman".

More troubling was the weight of a slew of more ugly terms - "crook", "untruthful", "criminal", "deceitful", "corrupt" and "crooked".

Hillary Clinton speaks at a campaign event in Scranton, Pennsylvania. Credit: AP

Clinton's numbers are firming as Trump implodes. But in recent time, close to 70 per cent of Americans have marked her down as dishonest. She can't make too much of Trump's worst-ever favourable ratings as a presidential candidate, because hers are the second worst.

We get plenty of frightening professional analysis on why Trump behaves as he does – Clinton gets less time on the analyst's couch. Though in 1996, there was quite a kerfuffle when William Safire, self-styled "libertarian conservative" columnist and one-time supporter of Bill Clinton, denounced the then first lady in print as a "congenital liar" and an "habitual prevaricator" - to which her husband responded by saying that were he not the president, he'd have punched Safire on the nose.

Despite being caught out repeatedly, Clinton is seen as consistently bending and breaking facts, whether it's about her past; about what she knew or didn't know about the 2012 Benghazi attack in which four Americans, including an ambassador, were killed; or about what she did or didn't do with the private email server stashed in her basement.

Clinton was sensational in 2008, claiming to have landed in Bosnia as first lady "under sniper fire … with our heads down". No – the only welcome she received was from smiling schoolchildren waiting on the tarmac, eager to present Clinton with their poems.

Donald Trump speaks during a coal mining roundtable in Virginia.Credit: AP

At Politifact, the fact checkers were underwhelmed by her claims to have helped usher in peace in Northern Ireland; to have negotiated border opening for Kosovars fleeing into Macedonia; and to have stood up to the Chinese government on women's rights.

Only one of her grandparents, not all four, were migrants to the US. No, she and Bill were not "dead broke" when they left the White House; and it's unlikely that she was named after Sir Edmund Hillary, because she was six years old when he climbed Everest.

Biden on the presidential election campaign trail with Hillary Clinton in August last yearCredit: AP

For many the issue of the email server is a drag. But Clinton's conduct in the several investigations into her use of the server while serving as secretary of state is revealing.

First, the State Department investigation revealed that what she publicly claimed was "allowed" had never been sanctioned; and that while claiming publicly to be co-operating with the investigation, she had refused to be interviewed.

If Clinton prevails, this will be the third election in a row in which Democrats prevailed with young voters.Credit: AP

Second, the FBI stopped short of charging Clinton for mishandling classified material, but bureau director James Comey gave her a tongue-lashing for being "extremely careless … negligent" as he demolished her oft-stated claims that no classified material had gone through the server and that "all" her work-related emails had been handed over to the department.

Despite the humiliation of Comey telling a congressional committee that she had been untruthful, Clinton doubled down at the end of July, telling Fox News: "Director Comey said my answers were truthful, and what I've said is consistent with what I have told the American people".

Clinton's carefully controlled public image has not helped her build trust.Credit: AP

In disagreeing, Washington Post fact-checker Glenn Kessler awarded Clinton four Pinocchios, which rated her claim that Comey had judged her to be truthful as "a whopper". And Americans balked at Comey's decision not to charge Clinton – almost 60 per cent wanted to see her in the dock.

Asked in February if she had ever lied, Clinton replied with a lawyer's caution: "I don't believe I ever have. I don't believe I ever will."

Robert Reich, US labour secretary under Bill Clinton, believes that Hillary Clinton has to break the habits of a lifetime to win a real mandate.Credit: Bloomberg

But in damage-control mode upon being sprung, she has sometimes excused herself for having "misspoken" or, as in the case of her whopperish misrepresentation of the FBI director's words, that she "may have short-circuited".

Inside Clinton, there's a lawyer that considers the meaning of individual words and of the gaps between them. So she often sounds long-winded, defensive and obtuse. When TV host Charlie Rose challenged her on Comey's charge that she was "careless", Clinton went into obfuscating overdrive: "Well, I would hope that you like many others would also look at what he said when he testified before Congress, because when he did, he clarified much of what he had said in his press conference."

Rose had checked the congressional transcript, so now he raised another of Comey's critiques: "But he said it was sloppy?"

"No," Clinton hit back, "he did not."

But that's precisely what Comey said.

Then there's the God-awful mess of the Clinton Foundation, which seems beyond firewalling, and Clinton's acceptance of multimillion-dollar fees for speeches to the big end of town – her stubborn refusal to share their contents is read as proof that she does indeed have something to hide.

Meredith McGehee, policy director for the nonpartisan Campaign Legal Center, describes the foundation as "a walking conflict-of-interest problem".

It now seems likely that Clinton will win by default. There is no substantive campaign debate. Clinton conducts herself as the serious, qualified candidate, but the speeches that her campaign bills as "major" add little by way of substance or detail that might help voters to make an informed choice.

Instead she plays whack-a-mole with Trump. The GOP candidate can hardly complain about the unrelenting media attention and analysis - he only ever got this far by manipulating the media. Happy to go under the radar if she can, Clinton doesn't complain either.

There is a rising fear in the Democratic Party that Clinton could end up as a president without a mandate – and an echo of agreement from the Republican Party says Democrats are right to worry.

Clinton administration labour secretary-turned-Bernie Sanders supporter Robert Reich warns that a relentless focus on Trump's temperament "doesn't give you a mandate to do anything".

And on the Republican side, former Ted Cruz campaign aide Rick Tyler agrees: "Clinton is not likely to emerge with a legislative mandate – she'll have to start from zero in terms of selling all her policy proposals. They will not have been sold through this [election] process."

For Republicans with half a brain, a hassle-free dash to the White House for Clinton could be catastrophic – they obsess about the long-term implications of her likely opportunity to appoint as many as three liberal judges to the Supreme Court, and many in the GOP have yet to realise that in allowing a Democrat to scoop up young voters for the third election in a row - a first since the early 1950s - the political allegiance of America's biggest generation may be set for some time.

Reich wonders if Clinton can break through the sentiment barrier with voters who like what she might do, but not who she is.

Setting out decades of critiques and challenges to her and her husband – some deserved, others less so – Reich argues that for Clinton to give any ground brings fear of yet another attack, to the point of her refusing to hold press conferences or speak off the cuff. He sees that impulse as understandable but also self-defeating, as revealed by the level of public distrust in her.

He offers a cure and a warning in the event that she does not take her meds: "It is critically important that she recognises this, that she fight her understandable impulse to keep potential attackers at bay, and that from here on she makes herself far more open and accessible – and clearly and fearlessly tells all."